Currently, creating statistics concerning a sporting event is an error prone manual operation that is greatly limited by the extent of human observation. In practice, there are one or more individuals present at a given sporting contest to at least run the dock and keep score. At the more competitive and professional levels, it is not unusual to have several statisticians at the game, each tracking a particular statistic and perhaps using a laptop computer to do this in real-time.
For the remainder of the application, the present inventor will provide examples with respect to the sport of ice hockey, although it will be understood by those familiar with sports and the technologies discussed herein, that these same teachings are applicable to all sports that share at least the following traits:                1. They are played within a predefined area;        2. They include at least one player that moves about within this predefined area;        3. They may include at least one player in opposition to that player who also moves about within the predefined area;        4. They may include a game object that is used by a player as a part of scoring points to win the contest;        5. The predefined area may be broken into real or virtual areas, such as but not limited to one player's side versus the other;        6. Each opposing side, or some other portion of the predefined area, may then also have within it a specific goal area where points may be scored by a player using the game object;        7. The contest may have a time limit that is tracked by an official game clock, and        8. If there is a time limit than this total game time may be broken into segments between which the players may or may not exchange opposing sides.        
There are many sports today that share these traits such as but not limited to:                Ice Hockey (Field Hockey, Roller Hockey);        American Football;        Soccer;        Baseball;        Basketball;        Tennis;        Volleyball;        Squash (Raquetball);        Etc.        
Furthermore, although it is not a requirement for the benefits of the present teachings, many of these sports have opposing teams of more than one player each. In general, these team sports all follow a general pattern, specifically:                1. Each team defends their half of the predefined area that includes a goal where the other team may score points;        2. Points are scored by in some way getting the game object into, through, across, etc. the opponent's goal;        3. At the beginning of the game or one of its segments, the game object is either given specifically and alternatively to one team for its control or it is set free by a game official to be immediately contested for;        4. The team that has control of the game object tries to keep control within the game rules as they advance the game object towards the opponent's goal; this team is currently on offense;        5. The opposing team tries to gain control of the game object so that they can then proceed towards their opponent's goal, or in general they try to impede or thwart within the game rules the offensive team from getting the game object into, through, across, etc. their goal; this team is currently on defense;        6. Often either the offensive or defensive team will break the game rules, sometimes with strategic intention for which they will be penalized, and        7. Each time a team manages to get the game object into, through, across, etc. the opponent's goal, they are awarded points that are then totaled into their score and at the end of the game determine the contest winner.        
Presently, there are many inventors who have proposed various ideas for following the movements of the one or more players and the game object. Some examples of their proposed devices include:                Active beacons to be worn on each player, or held within the game object that emit some form of energy that may be remotely detected and triangulated thereby providing at least position information if not also orientation and often identity;        Passive markers to be worn on each player, or on the game object, that can react with some form of tracking energy emitted from a source, where the reaction causes energy to leave the marker in such a way that it may then be detected by one or more energy detectors thereby providing at least position information if not also orientation and often identity;        Energy sensing systems that detect emitted and/or reflected energy from each player or game object without the presence or active beacons or passive markers, where the energy may then be detected and used to determine at least position information if not also orientation and often identity, or        Some combination of the above.        
These approaches of using active beacons, passive markers, and/or simply detecting emitted or reflected energy off of the players or game objects represent the span of total solutions for player and game object tracking known to the present inventor.
The exact method of gathering player and game object location and optionally orientation is in material for the teachings of the present invention, except that these methods provide real-time quantified data such as X, Y or X, Y, Z coordinates exactly locating a player or game object within the playing area in some known and calibrated measurement system, regardless of precision. As previously stated, the present inventor is aware of working systems including those from Trakus, Inc. of Massachusetts using active beacons and from Fox Sports using IR transmitters embedded in the game object (in practice shown for an ice hockey puck.)
In addition to Trakus, the present inventor is aware of at least one university that is also working to provide similar or variant solutions, namely the University or British Columbia.
And finally, as disclosed in referenced applications, the present inventor has also taught systems for automatically and remotely,:                1. determining the ongoing location of a player within the predefined area;        2. optionally determining the continuous orientation of the player for each determined position;        3. optionally determining, either continuously or intermittently, the identity of the player being tracked through various locations, and        4. determining the ongoing location of the game object within the predefined area.        
In addition to this player and game object tracking information, the present inventor has also taught in these same referenced applications different means for obtaining official game information such as but not limited to, current or total playing time, current period or segment of the playing time, current score by team, current penalty or infraction information, etc. The present inventor is not aware of other systems similarly purposed but could imagine that they might exist and for the purposes of the present teachings the only important point is that the official game data is obtained in time combination with the player and game object tracking data.
To the best understanding of the present inventor, regardless of the apparatus or methods used to determine the player and game object locations and orientation, there are no know systems for translating this information into anything more than the simplest of statistics. Therefore, given the current state of the art in automatic systems for tracking player and game object movement as well as real-time information processing systems, it is now possible to create a new wealth of statistics, performance measurements and dynamic game momentum indicators that far exceed human based observation in their objectivity, accuracy, temporal and special granularity, scope, etc.
As will be understood by those skilled in the art of real-time data acquisition, the teachings of the present invention are therefore universally applicable regardless of the specific apparatus and methods used to collect the player and game object tracking information or the official game data. As will also be understood by those skilled in the art of sports, the teachings of the present invention are equally applicable to virtually all sports and especially those sharing the common traits previously enumerated.
It is the object of the present invention to provide apparatus and methods for automatically determining ongoing and real-time statistics and performance measurements at least encompassing those currently determined by human observation by translating the continuous input of player and game object tracking information as well as time coordinate official game data. It is still further an object that these statistics and performance measurements have several aspects that are universally comparable across levels of age and competitive experience within a given sport and even across one or more sports. It is still further an object that these statistics and performance measurements be correlated in time with not only the player and game object tracking information but also with any game video being concurrently captured at least in such a way that the information may be automatically and intelligently applied as overlays to the video stream(s). Still further objects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from a consideration of the drawings and ensuing description.